Category Archives: Class Assigned Posts

I’ll be going on an adventure for my English class. This coming Wednesday, we’ll be journeying into my university’s archival collection and have the opportunity to observe the different artifacts and documents about my university’s history.

When I think of myself going to into the archives and doing research, I picture myself in an underground library and in an explorer outfit on ladders sliding down vast and tall book shelves searching for lost books. Although I know this imagery is unrealistic, I hope that searching through the archival collection will be exciting and allow me to see research in a new light.

The purpose of our archival search is to find information about my university’s history. Archives are incomplete sets of information and because of this, I decided that it would be in my best interest to remain open-minded about needing to switch topics and to have low expectations for the amount of information available.

Since my university was initially a California mission, I hope to find information about Native Americans and where they were when the mission became a university, how were they treated, where are the remnants of their village before the mission was built, how the missionaries viewed the Native peoples, where (if any) are their graves… I am very doubtful that I will find a wealth of information on Native peoples because of the “Principle of Selectivity” that Tirabassi explained in her essay, “Into the Archives.”

The “Principle of Selectivity” is the process in which one decides which documents or artifacts to keep within the archives and which ones to toss out. I do not have very high expectations that my answers regarding Native Americans can be answered with my school archives alone. In America, Native American history is omitted from textbooks and is heavily romanticized in grade school textbooks, so I would not be surprised by the lack of information. Another thing I would like to add is that the history of natives at my university, specifically, was not very pleasant. I feel that the university would have discarded much of the Native American artifacts because they thought the Jesuit documents and artifacts relating to the mission were more valuable. I will be extremely surprised if my school had a wealth of information about Native Americans but I highly doubt that this will be the case when my class visits the archival collection.

In short, I will head into the archives with an open mind and low expectations while hoping to find valuable information.

Wish me luck as I journey into my university archives! 

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Hello again! I am back blogging about my next English assignment: a research paper. Throughout this quarter, my professor has asked us to continuously blog about our research. And it is no question that research takes time, dedication, and effort. It definitely is not an easy task, and contrary to the photo below, research is not as simple as pushing a button.

However, the article “The Great Research Disaster,” written by William Badke, an associate librarian at Trinity Western University, reveals one student’s research strategy. The article contains the text from the student, Liw Ekdab’s, research experience and how he used techniques to fulfill requirements. Ekdab used techniques such as using Wikipedia for background information, citing quotes from an abstract, searching for sources on Google Scholar, using lengthy summaries to quote, and using incomplete quotes from incomplete articles. Although Ekdab’s techniques in producing quality research are questionable, most college students can relate closely with it.

My personal research experience is limited to writing high school level research papers. But similarly to Ekdab, I have used Wikipedia to gain basic background information about a certain topic. An example topic could be cheating in high school. After gaining a simple understanding of the topic, I proceed to develop an essential question that I attempt to answer through research. For instance one question in regards to cheating in high school could be, “What factors motivate a student to cheat in high school?”

After developing an essential question, I usually start with Google and type key words to find articles related to my topic and essential question. If I were still researching on cheating in high school, some example phrases I could type into the search bar are “cheating statistics in high school” and “factors that cause students to cheat.”

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However, if I fail to find any relevant articles, I would narrow my search by focusing on a specific part of the topic. For instance, if I was focusing on the different factors that cause cheating, I could research information on each individual factor related to cheating.

Similarly to Ekdab, I would also use Google Scholar as a second resource if I could not find anything by simply using the Google Search engine. Another experience I shared with Ekdab was quoting from the abstract of scholarly journals. Although this practice is not beneficial to the quality of my research, I only did this because in high school we did not have access to the majority online journals and were only limited to what was free on the internet.

Overall, I admit that the quality of my research was not very high. However, I believe that my research techniques are valid and useful. And since I’m in college and have access to a broader database, I can use these techniques on more credible resources resulting in producing  credible research papers.

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